


Oh You Try Not To Sink

by westandvigilant



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 08:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6650149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westandvigilant/pseuds/westandvigilant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eponine observes Enjolras on campus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh You Try Not To Sink

**Author's Note:**

> prompt fill: you’re the most interesting thing here, no doubt.

Quiet wasn’t something she was used to. She was used to chaos and thunder and lightening and loud laughter and louder shouting. It was the silence that she was scared of, that had always meant something terrible.

The voiceless moments. The calm before the storm. The time when the demons come, with their hisses and their shadows and they drag her down down down…

She preferred to do her studying at home, with the television blaring trashy reality shows. At the food court in the mall. Or in her favorite bar & grill during happy hour. Anywhere where her thoughts had company. Others called it impossible, she called it comfortable.

So it was completely understandable and totally normal that Éponine would have no desire to sit in a hushed library from 10:30-1:00pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

 

And yet she did. Every Tuesday and every Thursday without fail, Éponine was in the library, commons room floor 2, studying. Not really studying her textbooks, but studying all the same.

He always took a large table in the right corner. One of the tables that most people leave for large groups. But anyone could see that he needed every square inch of the beat up old oak table. Papers strewn to and fro, open pens rolling haphazard across mountains of books, a half eaten sandwich getting dangerously close to falling on the floor.

It probably would have seemed normal to anyone who didn’t know him, but she did. She remembered Enjolras quite clearly from when she used to tag along with Marius to his global politics club. But then the “club” got a little too “activist” for her tastes and Marius got a little too “spoken for”, so she stopped going.

Then one day she saw Enjolras, with his combed hair and his pressed shirt lording over this mess in the library and she was intrigued.

Contradiction, it seemed. He was contradiction incarnate. Soft lips that gave way to a harsh voice. A thin, willowy figure with broad shoulders and large hands. Beautiful and terrible. Organized chaos.

She didn’t mean to start watching him there. She just kind of found herself gravitating towards the library, safe in the notion that between his political focus and her invisibility, he’d never see her there. That even if he saw her there, sitting across the room with her worn out gloves and her oversized coat, there was no way he could recognize her.

But she should have known that he would find some way to surprise her.

She should have known that when she was packing up to leave, changing the song her iPod, that he would catch a glimpse of her smile. A smile that she reserved for few things, like good music and handsome men with kind faces.

She should have known that for all his tunnel-vision, he would recognize that smile. That smile that turned her from wraithlike to radiant. And that when he did, he would walk right over to her, face flushed with heat while buttoning up his coat. Statuesque despite his over-laden messenger bag.

But she didn’t know, so when he did, it made her heart beat in her ears and her breath catch in her throat.

“You’re Pontmercy’s ex-girlfriend, yes?”

Well, the directness she did expect. Éponine barked out a laugh, shoving her books into her backpack with trembling fingers. “Hardly. I don’t think he’s, uh, interested in someone like me. I mean have you met Cosette?”

“Oh, my apologies,” he says, breaking eye contact. “I’m not very good with… I mean- that is to say…” The words fumbled out of his mouth with such inability that he stopped and bit his lip. And the sight of the silver-tongued Enjolras biting his lips was enough to make a smirk creep into the corner of Éponine’s mouth.

Scratching his head, he finally began again with the smooth voice and piercing gaze she had grown to know over the past few weeks. “Well, Marius has always been a little oblivious to the finer things in life anyhow. Let me grab you some coffee to remedy my mistake.”

Then before she could even agree, he had his hand on the small of her back, quiet and sure, steering her towards the door. They walked without speaking. Comfortable. Warm.

Silent but together.

Maybe he was her contradiction.

Who knows.


End file.
